Category: Cryptocurrency

Trump is hosting a dinner for the biggest buyers of his memecoin. The guest list is finalized, and many of the top buyers are from other countries
For weeks, wealthy individuals have been scooping up the Trump family’s cryptocurrency in hopes of amassing enough to qualify for one of 220 seats at a dinner with President Donald Trump himself. In the words of Trump’s own website: “The competition is fierce. Own $TRUMP—or watch from the sidelines.” Now, the leaderboard is final and the winners from around the world are set to descend on Washington, D.C., to rub shoulders with the world’s most powerful man. So, who is going?
While the leaderboard is public, the identity of each winner—obscured by pseudonymous blockchain addresses—is not. But an analysis by Fortune revealed that 18 out of these top 25 holders have interacted with Binance, a foreign crypto exchange that excludes Americans, meaning they are likely foreign nationals.
Meanwhile, some of the winners—the top 25 of whom are entitled to attend an “ultra-exclusive private VIP Reception”—have publicly identified themselves or been identified by a crypto analytics firm. Here are three guests slated to go to the “Gala Dinner,” which critics have lambasted as an unprecedented example of corruption.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Chinese crypto billionaire Justin Sun
With more than $18 million in Trump’s memecoin, according to Monday prices, the top spot on the leaderboard is identified simply by the name “SUN.” The crypto analytics firms Arkham Intelligence and Nansen have said that the wallet is linked to HTX, a crypto exchange for which the billionaire Justin Sun serves as global adviser.
Neither Sun, who told Forbes in March that his net worth exceeds $40 billion, nor HTX responded to requests for comment.
The billionaire is a controversial figure in the crypto industry. Born in China, Sun founded Tron, a blockchain that hosted 58% of all illicit activity in crypto in 2024, according to a report from crypto analytics firm TRM Labs. (Illicit crypto volumes on Tron, however, declined by $6 billion from the year prior.)
Sun has found himself in the midst of numerous crypto debacles. Most recently, he allegedly pushed crypto trade outlet CoinDesk to spike a story on how the crypto billionaire bought and ate a $6.2 million banana.
Singapore crypto firm MemeCore
With about $17.5 million in Trump’s memecoin, the second largest holder on the leaderboard is the Singaporean crypto startup MemeCore, according to public posts from the firm and Nansen.
Founded in January 2024, the firm is building a blockchain for memecoins, or cryptocurrencies created as jokes without any inherent value, Ting Hsu, MemeCore’s chief business development officer, told Fortune. Trump himself is one of the most “iconic” memes, she said.
Hsu didn’t share exactly how the company is funding its Trump crypto investments, but she did say some of the money came from the company’s “internal treasuries” as well as from one of the startup’s anonymous cofounders, whose identity she declined to share. That anonymous founder will attend the dinner with Trump on May 22, according to Hsu.
The Memecore executive didn’t know who else was planning to attend the dinner and was also curious to see the guest list. “Why [do] you guys want to join this?” she asked.
Australian investor Kain Warwick
While he’s not one of the top 25 largest Trump memecoin holders, Kain Warwick, an Australian crypto investor, has made the top 220, according to The New York Times. (Warick did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.)
The founder of the crypto company Infinex, Warwick was playing basketball with his kids on a weekend afternoon in January when he saw on social media that the 47th president had apparently launched his own memecoin, according to his X account.
He didn’t know whether the cryptocurrency was legitimately Trump’s and worked feverishly to verify that it was real. He eventually did, invested some money, and went back to playing with his children.
But, as he was taking his kids to the beach, he doubled his bet. “Yesterday was a once-in-a-career opportunity,” he wrote, reflecting one day later on Trump’s cryptocurrency launch.
May 13, 2025
A Standard Chartered analyst has walked back their previous $120,000 bitcoin price prediction, suggesting that this target “may be too low.
A Standard Chartered analyst who predicted bitcoin hitting $120,000 by the second quarter now says his price call is “too low.”
“I apologise that my USD120k Q2 target may be too low,” Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets at Standard Chartered, said in a tongue-in-cheek comment shared with clients via email Thursday.
Last month, Kendrick wrote a note saying that he expects bitcoin to reach an all-time high of around $120,000 in the second quarter of 2025 on the back of a “strategic asset reallocation away from US assets” and “accumulation by ‘whales’ (major holders).”
“We expect these supportive factors to push BTC to a fresh all-time high around USD 120,000 in Q2,” Kendrick said at the time. “We see gains continuing through the summer, taking BTC-USD towards our year-end forecast of 200,000.”
On Thursday, Kendrick said his $120,000 bitcoin price call now “looks very achievable” and that this may even be too low a target.
“The dominant story for Bitcoin has changed again,” the Standard Chartered analyst said. “It was correlation to risk assets … It then became a way to position for strategic asset reallocation out of US assets.”
“It is now all about flows. And flows are coming in many forms,” he added.
His comments come as bitcoin once again topped the $100,000 level. The price of the cryptocurrency was last trading up by 4.5% at $$100,511.22, according to Coin Metrics.
In recent years, analysts have picked up on a pattern that shows bitcoin trading in a similar way to risk assets such as U.S. technology stocks — the rationale being that increased inflows of more institutional capital into bitcoin makes it more prone to the same market risks equity markets face.
Kendrick — who has long held a bullish position on the cryptocurrency — said that U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds have seen $5.3 billion of inflows in the past three weeks, suggesting more institutional money is piling in.
He pointed to several examples of large investors allocating part of their portfolios to bitcoin, including software firm MicroStrategy ramping up bitcoin purchases, the Abu Dhbai sovereign wealth fund holding BlackRock’s IBIT bitcoin ETF, and the Swiss National Bank buying shares of MicroStrategy.
MicroStrategy is widely considered a proxy for bitcoin.
May 8, 2025
MoviePass is hoping a fantasy box office app will be its winning strategy moving forward
MoviePass, the startup that made its mark with its movie theater subscription service, has always been known for shaking things up, and its latest venture is no exception.
The company announced on Thursday the beta launch of Mogul, a new daily fantasy entertainment platform designed specifically for the Hollywood industry.
To understand what Mogul is, it’s important to first grasp the concept of daily fantasy sports. This subcategory of fantasy sports allows players to compete over short-term periods, rather than an entire season. Players assume the role of team managers, creating their own dream teams made up of real-world athletes and earning points based on how those athletes perform in actual games.
Mogul takes this idea by allowing users, who are likely passionate movie enthusiasts interested in this sort of thing, to act as studio heads in the film industry. Players are provided with a budget and “studio credits” (in-game currency) to spend on selecting actors for their leagues.
Users can update their lineup of movie actors each day. They then participate in fantasy-style tournaments that last about a week, plus one-on-one competitions and solo challenges. Participants make calls on the results of various things, such as box office results, audience turnout, critic ratings, and potential award winners.
As users level up, they earn digital collectibles — think signed posters and memorabilia — that help them climb the leaderboard.
Mogul is built on Sui, a layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform developed by Mysten Labs. Beta testers will receive a digital wallet to securely store their in-game virtual currency, rewards, and collectibles.
Mogul app interface (IMAGE CREDITS:MOVIEPASS/MOGUL)
MoviePass is taking a bold leap with the introduction of Mogul, as it has never really been done before. But CEO Stacy Spikes believes it’s a huge market waiting to be tapped. He said, “People can name more actors than they can probably name sports athletes. So I think there’s a really big market opportunity there.”
Initially, when we first learned about Mogul, we didn’t anticipate that it would take off, at least not in the early stages. We wondered if there are many movie fans willing to compete with others about box office revenue or ratings.
However, we may have underestimated its appeal. The company claims that more than 400,000 people have already signed up for the early-access waitlist. It remains to be seen whether it can maintain this level of interest leading up to the official launch, but it could become popular among niche film industry followers.
Mogul app interface (IMAGE CREDITS:MOVIEPASS/MOGUL)
During our initial conversation with Spikes, he positioned Mogul as a predictive market platform. Later on, we were told that a more fitting description would be to classify Mogul as a daily fantasy sports platform, but it may evolve to include this functionality in the future. For now, though, Mogul operates exclusively with virtual currency.
This distinction is important, especially considering the regulated nature of daily fantasy sports, as opposed to prediction market platforms, which currently exist in a legal gray area. Kalshi, for instance, has been in ongoing legal battles with state gambling regulators.
“It’s murky what needs to be approved. There are different types of clearances, depending on the markets you want in the U.S. You have to go state by state. It literally is like a Chinese puzzle with stuff all over the place,” Spikes said.
Mogul represents the initial phase of MoviePass’s long-term web3 strategy. The company has previously revealed its intention to provide on-chain rewards for attending movies. It’s also backed by Animoca Brands, a venture capital firm specializing in blockchain technology.
Last year, MoviePass partnered with Sui to allow subscribers to make payments using USD coin.
May 4, 2025